It was past midnight when Ari walked alone into the Codarium Vault, the subterranean sanctum hidden beneath Sanctum Academy's ruins—one of the few places where the System's veil wore thin.
The only light came from runes, long inactive, but now glowing softly at his touch.
Query: Initiate Contact. Layer: Core.
Input: User ID – Ari Originis.
Override Detected. Executing Pre-System Protocol...
Reality shimmered.
The walls twisted—not crumbling, but rewriting. The stone flattened into mirrors, reflecting infinite versions of himself, none matching the one he saw in his mind.
Then—
Silence shattered.
A small child appeared, barefoot, wrapped in woven silver lines that pulsed with living code. Her eyes were blank and endless, her presence an impossible paradox.
It was her again.
The Embodiment of the System.
"You again," she said, tilting her head. "The variable I can't contain."
Ari didn't bow. He didn't tremble. Not this time.
"Tell me," he said. "Who were the true heirs of the System? Before the Six Families rewrote the world."
She stared at him blankly, but her form flickered—glitching into something older, less childlike. For a moment, she resembled a woman made of starlight, fragmented code trailing from her fingers like strands of a broken tapestry.
"You ask questions not meant to be remembered," she said.
"Then why do I remember?"
"Because you are not of this Cycle."
Her words cracked the air.
She extended her hand, and a mirror formed between them—an ancient slab of reflective crystal not coded by Signum, but something far more primal.
Inside it flickered images:
A vast empire, golden-threaded skies…
A people born with glyphs etched into their skin, speaking magic like breath.
A council of shimmering beings—the Progenitors.
And then: betrayal. Rewriting. Erasure.
"The Originis were not simply powerful," she said. "They were the seed-code. The first compiler. You… are the last surviving Compiler. The others became Fragmented—broken into the new lineages."
Ari's hands tightened.
"Then why delete them?"
The child looked down.
"Because the others feared you. Not you personally. But what you represent."
"And what's that?"
"Choice."
The mirror cracked.
A pulse tore through Ari's mind—memories not his, voices not human, languages that shouldn't have existed.
He clutched his head, falling to his knees. Symbols spiraled behind his eyes, ancient and recursive, almost alive.
"You are rewriting the world again," the child said quietly. "That is not… permitted."
"Then who permits it?" Ari snarled.
"The Rules. The Failsafes. The—"
"I AM the failsafe," Ari growled, standing up. "And I choose to recompile."
The room exploded into white.
Ari awoke in his quarters at Sanctum, gasping. Eluin sat at the edge of the bed, her Dreamscript veil flickering like static.
"You went back in," she said softly. "Did she tell you?"
Ari nodded, voice hoarse.
"We weren't just heirs. We were architects."
He looked down at his palms.
His veins shimmered faintly now—not with color, but with syntax.
"And now I have the keys again."
"What are you going to do with them?"
"Rewrite the rules."
Far beneath the world, deep in the Echo Vault's central sanctum, alarms blared silently.
A projection of the Embodiment appeared before the Grand Archivists.
"Containment has failed," she said. "Compiler has awakened."
The Council sat in silence.
And then, one Archivist whispered:
"Let the other kingdoms pray… that he doesn't remember everything."